'Liza with a Z' Resurfaces After 30 Years

John Crook, Zap2itZap2It.com

Early in "Liza with a Z: A Concert for Television" -- the Emmy-winning 1972 music special Showtime will air in a digitally restored version on Saturday, April 1 -- there's a revelatory moment that vividly crystallizes the question of what makes Liza Minnelli Liza Minnelli.

Last telecast in 1973 and long thought lost since the mid-'80s, the hourlong special features Minnelli in a diverse lineup of songs directed and choreographed by Bob Fosse, ranging from the witty title song that makes fun of the singer's frequently misspelled name to a rousing and inevitable medley from "Cabaret."

About 10 minutes into the special, however, Minnelli -- dressed in a spanking white Halston pantsuit -- steps up to the microphone and begins a song called "It Was a Good Time." A little-remembered melody Maurice Jarre composed for the David Lean film "Ryan's Daughter," the song opens in a jaunty mood, but as more dissonant chords begin to steal in, Minnelli turns the piece into a shattering character study of a single mother reflecting on her failed marriage.

"I'm so glad that's your favorite number, because I think it's mine, too," Minnelli says during a recent phone interview from New York. "It was so difficult and such a concentrated acting thing to do. And it came off. It's all there.

"Bob Fosse didn't like the number at first, but I went home and worked on it with Marvin Hamlisch right up to that very night. Bob challenged me; he knew how to get a performance out of people, and he wound up loving it. You can tell by the way he edited it."

Minnelli is wholly in her element in a number like this, because it plays to what she considers her biggest strength: as a storyteller, not primarily a singer like her mother, Judy Garland.

"I never wanted to be a singer; I wanted to a storyteller," she explains. "Look, if you grew up with a mother's voice like mine had, you're stupid if you think you're going to sing better. You've got to think of something else.

"I always wanted to dance, but then I saw Charles Aznavour, and I thought, 'That's what I want to do. I want to tell stories.' And that's what my shows are about now.

"If you look at the 'book' for one of my shows now, on one side are the lyrics, and on the other is the character breakdown of each different woman. Aznavour was my mentor, and he taught me about specifics: 'Specifics cause the secrets that make someone curious about why you are doing something.' I learned to do that with every song, to think in terms of the specifics of each woman."

When Minnelli went into rehearsals for "Liza With a Z," she was coming off a critically acclaimed turn as "divinely decadent" Sally Bowles in the Fosse-directed film version of "Cabaret," which had opened in theaters a few weeks earlier. She and Fosse both would go on to collect Academy Awards for their work on that film, but the director already was eager to film the 26-year-old Minnelli in concert at the height of her powers.

Collaborating with the "Cabaret" composer-lyricist team of John Kander and Fred Ebb, who were longtime friends of Minnelli, Fosse planned to film a one-night-only performance in front of a celebrity-packed audience via eight 16mm cameras he strategically positioned through Manhattan's Lyceum Theater.

Everyone concerned realized they had only one chance to get it right, but Minnelli says she doesn't recall having stage fright on that evening of May 31, 1972.

"I remember being very concentrated, and I remember thinking, 'I have one shot at this, and I've got to concentrate. Every second has to be immediate. Put one foot in front of the other and don't skip anything. Don't stop to judge yourself, and don't anticipate what you're going to do next, just be there and do it,' " Minnelli says. "Luckily, Fosse caught everything, every flick of my eyes. The whole film is like a love letter from him, but then, in a funny kind of way I feel that he and Fred and John invented me, so they were kind of celebrating their invention."

Because there was no way to view the 16mm recording immediately after the concert, Minnelli says she and Fosse just had to shrug and hope the filming had come off as well as they thought it had.

"I asked Freddy [Ebb) if he thought it went OK, and he said, 'I think so, but somebody gave me a Valium, so I'm not sure,'" Minnelli says, laughing.

"Liza With a Z" premiered on NBC on Sept. 10, 1972, earning rave reviews and winning four Emmys and a Peabody Award. After two subsequent repeat airings, the film was retired to the vaults and eventually misplaced.

In 1999, restoration expert Michael Arick began talking to Minnelli about trying to find and restore the special, then spent the better part of six years on what she calls "a tremendous labor of love."

She says Arick's success with the restoration surpasses her wildest hopes for the project.

"It feels so alive!" Minnelli says. "When they took it to the Toronto Film Festival, people applauded after every number, like it's a live performance. It really works on that level.

"What's wonderful is that this is a 'lost' Fosse theater piece, and a lost Fosse movie. It's a hugely important piece for that reason, because you get to see some of his finest choreography. What the chorus does, and the humor of 'I Gotcha,' and the elegance of numbers like 'Bye Bye, Blackbird.' We had a great time -- worked our behinds off, but we laughed a lot.